Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Conditions in the grim, vermin-infested army barracks at Scutari, Turkey, converted to a military hospital for British soldiers wounded in the war against Russia in the Crimea, were far beyond anything Florence Nightingale or her team of 38 nurses had anticipated: sick and dying soldiers, most of them suffering from cholera dysentery, lay everywhere--in Scutari, war wounds accounted for only one death in six. . . . With improved sanitation, death rates at Scutari soon begin to fall, and when Nightingale returned to England in 1856, she was welcomed as a national heroine." [Furtado: 1001 Days]